Event Details

Local author, Norma Yaeger, will sign her new releaseBreaking Down the Walls: 50 Courageous and Successful Years at the Forefront of the Women’s Movement on Saturday, August 10 at 12:00 PM at Barnes & Noble, located at 23630 Valencia Blvd. Valencia, CA 91355.

Breaking Down the Walls tells the remarkable story of Norma Yaeger, a five-foot-tall dynamo who rose from near-poverty in the early 1960s to found two securities brokerage firms and a mutual fund, despite the sexism she encountered at every turn in the old-boy-network of the financial services industry.

In 1962, stuck in a crumbling marriage to an angry, underemployed husband with three hungry children, Norma longed to find a way to provide for her family. A chance remark by an old friend led her to the training program at a New York brokerage, which took her on despite the fact that there had never been a woman stockbroker in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. From the hostility she encountered as the only woman in her class of trainees, to the lack of support she received from her husband and family and the sexism of the Stock Exchange itself, the odds against her success were long. But for the indomitable Norma, failure was not an option. In a long career of “firsts”, she not only changed the future of the financial services industry, but also threw open its doors for the women who followed in her high-heeled footsteps.

Now retired, Norma still avidly follows the stock market from her home in Encino, where she lives with her second husband, Dr. Lawrence Yaeger. Breaking Down the Walls is her first book and a candid memoir of a 20th Century pioneer.

For more information about this event, please call (661) 254-5903 or email crm2642@bn.com.